Fix Me Tea

Puck requested tea for breakfast. In America, I have to believe that this is somewhat… odd? Of course, this is the same kid who eats salad raw – no embellishments whatsoever – and likes it. Will ask for it, if I forget to add it to his plate.
Beats me.
So I prepared a cup of hot blueberry tea, given to him by Gloria on Saturday. He sipped it, holding both sides of the yellow ceramic cup, delicately, with unavoidably dirty fingernails. As he conducted his breakfast, he imagined spectacles that only Puck would imagine…
“They might have a sign up at work that says, ‘No dads allowed’. Or ‘Puck’s dad not allowed’.”
The puff of blonde hair staring back seriously at me from across the table, like an electrified mushroom or something… I don’t know.
We wrapped up “tea” by reading Spurgeon. I love reading his sermons aloud. Very rich, even in an older tongue, which works better anyway for this kind of read, I think.

Puck became teary over his morning snack apple when Floozie took a running leap up the fridge to hunker down on the kitchen cabinet tops.
“She’s hiding from me!” he tried bravely not to cry.
I explained that it made cats happier to survey the world from above. I left out the part that I think it’s also because it makes them feel superior and even more snooty than they already are on the ground. It took some convincing, but eventually he accepted this basic feline fact, and resumed happy-go-lucky.
More Legos in the bathroom sink. And an antique coffee recipe book. Who knows where that one came from. Underneath the sink, Puck had stored both the cats for their very own tour of a new secret hiding place around Ghanian black soap, rubber ducks, and expired mouth wash.

Apparently Linnea-Irish is really, really good at volleyball. I haven’t made more than one game since last year, due to the price of tickets and the unpredictable distance of their tournaments. However, I didn’t mind contributing a check for a tub of fundraising snickerdoodle cookie dough. Where are my priorities? Anyway, she recently announced that she has been elected to Varsity, which is a pretty high compliment from what I hear. Finally, a true sportsman in the family, following Dad’s legendary feats of valor in high school. I mean, Francis and Joe really just can’t count. Even if Joe pitched well and sloughed off scads of foul balls in coach-impressed rows, a team called The Penguins just can’t make it that far in the competitive world of little league baseball.

I flipped on some Juanes during Quiet Hour. Trying to get the Colombian rhythm going in the spirit here. Of course I have no idea, or limited idea, of lyrics. But again, even if they were in English, I probably wouldn’t understand. As I hobbled around on two sore legs from sprinting up too many unexpected ramps and staircases at the ballpark.

The Bear brought great shock by buzzing in at 4:38, an almost unheard-of record of return. It felt like a small vacation. After he tucked in our son for the night he joined the new assistant pastor at eight o’clock for coffee and youth discussions.

Thought of the Day

My sisters and I have this weird habit of loving things so much, that we “squish them to death”, or “eat them in a stew”. I know this probably conjures disturbing images of four hags huddling around a black iron pot in some primeval wood. But it’s just kind of the way we got built. Or we see something that looks squishy or just “pick-up-able”, and we feel the same need to… destroy. Or at least pocket. Like when Carrie was a kid and watched football players on television.
“I just want to pinch them by their helmets,” she said.
Not that football helmets look squishy per se… but I guess I can sort of see moving them around like chess pieces or something equally entertaining.
Or take Sunday night at the game. We waited on the top level for Linnea to run those bases for awhile. And I saw something I needed to take care of…
“Uh oh.”
Linnea looked at me. “What?”
I pointed to the little Latina child standing right in front of us, holding her dad’s hand.
“I feel like I need to flick that girls’ pigtails.”
“Uh oh.”
“Stop me if you see my hand going out.”
“I will.”
In my defense, they were pretty cool pigtails. Thick spongy sorts of braids sticking out of the top of her head like two ropes. Begging to be messed with.
Highly tempting…
Need I mention that one of the more favorite quotable lines of our sisterhood actually emerged from “Finding Nemo”…
“I shall call you Squishy, you shall be mine, and you shall be my squishy!”
So I guess at least someone else somewhere else had the same sort of idea going…